[#067] Only Those

Every springtime, on the third of March, twelve figures gather around the well behind the high school on the western end of Summerdown Grove. Eleven of them are children, dragged kicking to the rim by the last. This last is different every year, chosen from a lottery of the 1300 adults left in town.

But the eleven are always the same.

The twelfth knows a secret. The twelfth knows a command the children cannot break, names passed down a hundred years since the last time the ritual failed, the last time the cows died on their feet and rotted standing in the fields, the last season the adults woke up to missing sons and daughters and to fields of burning grass. Today the twelfth has never known this fear, and still they chase their duty.

For the twelfth knows how to find them, and the twelfth knows how to tell.

Not all children in the Grove are human, and only those who speak the names can see.

Only those who speak the names can hold the cycle for another year.